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Talk:Cutey Honey 90s/@comment-4977160-20181020155937
Personally, I don't see how anyone can read the 1992-93 CUTIE HONEY and continue to spout the fiction that Honey is "the first magical girl". CH Flash went and REimagined Honey in the Sailor Moon mode in 1996 by the same team of creators, but that really has nothing to do with the raw manga character as created by Go Nagai. The 92-93 version is a LOT closer to Devilman than to Sailor Moon, and in fact, the first half (maybe even more than half) is bordering on raw hentai -- like it or not, that's the REAL Honey as seen by Mr. Go Nagai himself. I suspect what some CH fans who were introduced to the character through the later anime (and spinoff manga by other creators) are objecting to about the 90s version is that it's just TOO much in-your-face GO NAGAI, pushing the 1990s manga envelope and being the "bad boy of manga". It's like dumping a bucket of ice water on the heads of the "magical girl" genre fans who want Honey to be that -- but she's not. This version is just pure unadulterated Nagai, and that's not going to sit well with every fan of the various anime versions of Cutie Honey. Studio Ironcat's chosen title of "Cutie Honey '90" for this version of CH doesn't make a whole lot of sense, given that Nagai created the story (as it originally ran in Japan) in 1992-93, and Studio Ironcat didn't publish it in English until 1998.... and more than that (if this isn't a mis-translation), the story is said to be taking place 30 YEARS after the original Cutie Honey (1973-74), so that would mean that the story setting is actually in 2003-04, five years after when SI was publishing it, and 10 years after Nagai created it. Danbei Hayami is specifically mentioned as being 88 years old (and a 40ish-looking Junpei makes a cameo appearance in one panel). That would make Danbei 58 years old in the original 1973 series, which sounds about right. There is a later reference to "astrologers" predicting a meteor (or comet) will hit earth "in 2003", but I'm not sure if that's a mistranslation, or an instance of Go Nagai forgetting he'd initially started the story set 10 years in the future (since it seems that if the 2003 prediction were the current year of the story, it would be easy to tell if a meteor was on its way to earth). I haven't read the original Japanese version of these stories, but I can see where Studio Ironcat's first 4 issues, under the editorship of one "Kayt Robarts", had some things that seem like they might be a little loosey-goosey in the translation department. Those things (and some instances of poor reproduction quality) seem to have pretty well disappeared after editor Kevin Bennett took over with Vol. 1 Part 5. I suspect Studio Ironcat is taking the brunt of the blame for things people really didn't like about this manga that Go Nagai himself is responsible for. If the art quality was uneven in early issues, it may have been due to Mr. Nagai's crushing workload and the employment of assistants to help him meet his schedules. Not EVERY female Japanese superhero is a magical girl, regardless of where she fits in the chronology of female heroes in Japan. The only real difference between Cutie Honey and Kekko Kamen (pointed out here in a joke scene) is that Kekko Kamen shows even more skin than Honey. Cutie may be more like "Supergirl" to Kekko's "Batgirl", but that's what they are, just girl heroes (and not necessarily meant as heroes for girls). No real difference here between shouting "Henshin!" and "Honey Flash!"... and it's probably helpful to remember that Go Nagai was once an assistant to Shotaro Ishinomori before he hit the big time on his own with "Shameless School".